CD drive cannot be read digitally

[centrax]

Can anyone please help.
When I try to copy Music CD's to my hard disk I get the message:-
We have determined that Windows media player cannot accurately read your CD drive digitally so has to read it in analog mode.

Is there anything I can do to sort this? It takes forever to record a CD in analog mode and the quality is not as good as digital.

I'm using windows media player version 7.01.00.3055 on windows 98SE.
It used to work without any problems some while ago but now it's playing up.
I noticed a similar question asked back in April but there were no replies. Anyone out there know the answer.

Thanks

 

[ceh4702]

Music CDS are not digital! However it may be possible to have a digital jack on the CD player and send the music to a digital input on a sound card or some other stereo device that has digital input and record it that way. Of course you could convert the songs to MP3 or WMA and record them that way. Some new DVD players are designed to play many different formats of DVD's and CD's including MP3, WMA, and MPEG2, along with display graphical images like MPEG.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[8humhum8]

centrax, i had the same problem. suddenly, digital output has been rendered impossible. go to device manager and right click on the cdrom you use. click properties, and on the properties tab make sure the 'enable digital CD audio for this CDROM device' is checked. im pretty sure it is, because thats how it waz in my case. if it is, disable any error checkin in windows media player and ignore any error messages of this type. worked for me in real-one and win-media.

ceh4702, what centrax means is digital copy - you can play and copy as you would from a cassete (analog) or copy the bits of data as from a floppy disk (digital, and MUCH faster). if you rip CDs digital is the one you use, or you would have to wait as long as the length of the song (i.e. if its 3:38 min then thats how long you wait, because the song has to be played to be recorded).
Music CDs are digital, because they consist of bits (0 or 1 yes?) and not of waves, or else there wouldnt be data CDs. analog has many values, but digital only two.

 

[centrax]

Thanks 8humhum8 for your reply.

It got me thinking so I checked to see that digital was selected in device manager,(which it wasn't for some reason), re-booted etc. but unfortunately, when I run windows media player and try again, I get the same message and it re-sets itself (in media player) back to analogue.
There must be an answer but my brain is hurting trying to figure it out. I think I'm having a bad computer day !!!

 

[cdogg]

Some older or cheap CDROM drives don't support "digital audio extraction". That might be the reason why the "enable digital CD Audio" option in Device Manager won't stay checked.

How old is your system? I had a PC from 1996 that had this problem. Just about every CDROM drive I've seen since 1997 should be able to digitally extract without any problems.

You might want to try using other software to extract the audio tracks. CDEX is just one example. You can search for a ton of free utilities to help you out at

http://www.downloads.com.

~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[centrax]

Thanks cdogg, I guess my drive is a touch long in the tooth so I took your advice and downloaded CDEX and also CD to WAV and MP3 Ripper, installed the second one & was asked if I also wanted to run aspi32.exe. This I did and lo & behold everything is back to where it should be including downloading from Windows Media Player.
Something must have got deleted somewhere along the line and now I'm back in business.

Thanks a lot to all who replied, you're a great bunch of guys & gals !!!

 

[BadBigBen]

Hi there centrax,

you hit the spot... something did get deleted...

Your ASPI drivers... go to the Adaptec Homepage and there you will find the latest ASPI drivers...

Oh, btw I use EAC to extract AudioCDs and LAME to compress them to MP3... works like a charm and is compatible with both Win98SE and XP...

Ben